ABSTRACT
An international debate on the welfare systems of East Asia was sparked by the 1997 economic crisis. Capitalists in the Asian NIEs were created in the process of state-led industrialization, and did not create the regime by themselves. As for Taiwan, Singapore and Korea, each state’s elites seemed to choose an “exclusionary” policy at first. The Taiwanese and Singaporean governments harshly eradicated anti-governmental labor unions, and established their own conformist labor organizations. East Asian countries were pushed toward the construction of their welfare systems by democratization from the late 1980s and by the economic crisis of the late 1990s. In Taiwan, the social security system was introduced prior to full-scale industrialization because of the formation of inclusionary corporatism. The impact of the Asian economic crisis on Hong Kong was second only to Korea in severity among the Asian NIEs.
